VA, Navy to formalize Great Lakes land deal

Barracks planned for 48-acre site

February 08, 2002|By Julie Ewart, Special to the Tribune.

Top officials from the Navy and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will meet Friday in North Chicago to sign a land-transfer deal, part of a nearly $1 billion plan to renovate the Navy's only boot camp.

The North Chicago VA Medical Center will give 48 acres to the neighboring Great Lakes Naval Training Center. In exchange, the Navy will agree to buy electricity and steam for facilities on the land from a co-generation energy center that Nicor Gas is negotiating to build on VA property.

Secretary of the Navy Gordon England and Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Leo S. Mackay Jr. are expected to sign the agreement at 11 a.m. Friday at the medical center.

The land will be used for seven new barracks and a drill hall. Construction is scheduled to begin this year and end in 2006. The barracks will include dining facilities and classrooms, according to Lt. Cmdr. John Wallach, Great Lakes spokesman.

The new facilities are a part of Great Lakes' nearly $1 billion boot camp recapitalization project, which began in 1999 and will continue through 2010.

Great Lakes' boot camp facility, which trains 55,000 sailors a year, is on a long sliver of land. Consequently, it sometimes can take up to 45 minutes to transport recruits between activities, Wallach said.

The new land "will help us to train more efficiently and at less cost to taxpayers by cutting transition times," he said.

Great Lakes has been the Navy's only boot camp since bases were closed in Orlando and San Diego in 1994.

The 48 acres were once the site of a nine-hole golf course for veterans. The land has not been used since former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown decided in the mid-1990s that no VA funds would be spent on golf courses, VA spokesman Doug Shouse said.

Part of the land was leased to Chicago Medical School, but the VA will swap a different property with the school, Shouse said.

According to Shouse, the VA is making plans with Nicor for the utility to build an energy center at no cost to the VA, in exchange for the agency's 20-year agreement to purchase energy.

"By providing more users for this plant, the Navy will reduce our costs and provide us more money to spend on programs for veterans," Shouse said.